We are all about Harry Potter in this House, from our Harry Potter Christmas Tree to my daughter’s crazy Harry Potter Birthday Party, I love finding ways to bring Harry Potter into our every day life. I first saw this idea as a meme on Facebook and I knew immediately that I wanted to turn it into a shirt for my Harry Potter obsessed older daughter. It is a little bit of work to get all of the pieces cut and layered but these step by step instructions should make it easy! You can even find my design files here for fast creating!
Harry Potter Merry Hallows DIY Shirt
For this project you will need:
- a blank white shirt
- red heat transfer
- black heat transfer
- light green heat transfer
- dark green heat transfer
- white heat transfer
- a Cricut
- Cricut EasyPress
- Cricut Brightpad
When you open the new Cricut Design Space, it will look like the photo above. The top banner will be followed by projects that you have created. It will show your most recent projects, you can see that my most recent projects are this one and some Christmas shirts inspired by the movie Elf. Below your projects will be Ready to Make projects , a fun variety of predesigned projects that are great when you are looking for something cute and fast to make. To get started in the New Cricut Design Space, hit the plus sign on the left hand side of your projects or the green New Project button in the top right corner.
After you select New Project, a blank canvas will open up for you. The canvas is a grid, so you will be able to see exactly how big your project is. Each of the little squares is an inch. For this project we will be using Cricut’s predesigned images and adding our own text underneath each of the images.
Select the image button on the left hand menu bar. It will bring up a screen like the one above. In the top right hand corner of the image screen you will see a search bar. Type what you are looking for into the search bar.
You can see that each of the images has a price listed and if the image is included in the Cricut Access subscription. Cricut Access is a monthly subscription that lets you use all of the fonts and images in the access library. Since we are using all Access images and fonts with this shirt, if you had the subscription they would all be free to use. If a image is included in the subscription, you will see a little green A right by the image.
Select the image you want and then hit insert in the bottom right hand corner. This will add this image to your canvas. For this particular project, I searched for a simple picture of a Christmas Tree, a picture of a wreath and a picture of a candy cane then added all three to my canvas.
Once you have inserted the image into your project you can resize it and move it around. Resize the image by clicking and dragging on the double arrow symbol that appears when you have the image selected. If you want to more accurately resize objects, you can type the dimensions in the bar that will appear at the top of the screen when you have an image selected. As you can see in the image below, I resized all of my objects to be 2.5 inches tall for the front of the shirt.
Add text by hitting the text button in the far left menu. A text box will pop up and you can type what you want the project to say. I used three separate text boxes for the front of the shirt, one under each of the design elements. Type The Tree Of Christmas in one box, select the box and you will be able to resize the words and change the font if you want. Press enter in the text box between Tree and Of to but them on two separate lines. Then repeat this process for The Wreath of Holly and The Cane of Candy.
Copy and paste these design elements to the side of your project. Resize the tree to 6 inches tall instead of 2.5 and then resize the wreath and the candy cane to fit inside of the tree.
One of my favorite features of Cricut Design Space is that when you change the colors of elements in the layers pallet, the program will assume that you want to cut those items out of a different kind of material. To change the colors of something, go over to the far right side and find the element you want to change. For text boxes, they are usually represented by the first letter in the line of text. For images, if will show a small version of the image. Click on the colored black dot and a color menu will pop up and you can change it to another color. Change the colors of the elements to the colors you are actually going to use, this will help Design Space know how many colors of vinyl you are going to use.
When your project looks the way you want it, it the Make It button in the top right corner of the screen. Hit the mirror image button on the left hand side of the screen. Make sure you hit the mirror image button for EACH of the mats you have in this project. To do this, you just click the mat to select it and then hit mirror. Start with the 1st color, place the iron-on shiny side down onto your Cricut mat and then load your mat into your machine.
Hit continue and then select your material in the drop down on the screen. In this case, we are usually regular iron-on
Lay your first piece of heat transfer shiny side down on the mat. Slide it under the feet of your machine and hit the flashing go button. After it is done cutting, pull the mat out of the machine and repeat with all of the colors.
Peel the heat transfer off of your mat and then weed (peel apart) the heat transfer until just your design remains on the sticky backing. This is where you use the Cricut BrightPad to help you see any cut lines and weed the project properly. Cut apart any of the designs that have multiple pieces in one sheet, so you can place them on the shirt separately.
Add the first layer of iron-on face down on your shirt. The first layer includes the words and the base of each item. You will be able to see through the plastic backing so you can put your project together just the way you want it. Just make sure that none of the letters or images are touching the plastic backing of another element or it will fuse to that instead of the shirt. Heat your iron up to the hottest setting or you EasyPress to 305 degrees. Iron straight onto the plastic, making sure each element of the design gets 30 seconds of pressure and hit. Start pulling up the plastic backing and if any of the elements pull up at all, put the plastic back down and iron that area again. Peel the plastic sheet off and place down your second layer of heat transfer.
The second layer of heat transfer for the front of the shirt include the star on top of the Christmas tree and the bow and berries for the wreath. Place those items where you want them on the shirt and then place a iron protective sheet over the entire front of the shirt and iron the design again.
Lay a piece of parchment paper over your ironing board and then flip the shirt to the back for the back design. The first layer for the back is the words and the large Christmas Tree. Iron them on the same way you ironed on the front of the shirt.
For the second layer, iron on the wreath, make sure you cover the entire image with the protective sheet before you iron this stage.
For the third stage add the holly berries and the bow to the wreath, cover the entire project with the protective sheet and iron again. For the fourth stage, add the white for behind the Candy Cane and iron, then the red and the star and then iron.
This shirt comes together in many different pieces but the end product is absolutely amazing! My daughter is in love with this shirt and it makes me want to make more Harry Potter inspired Christmas tees.
What kinds of things have you made with a Cricut?
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.
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